The Battle of Chrisp Street

The Battle of Chrisp Street by Rab Harling

A public market serving the daily needs of the local working class community has existed in Poplar at Chrisp Street since Victorian times. In 1951, the market underwent a significant redesign by modernist architect Sir Frederick Gibberd, in celebration of the Festival of Britain, creating the UK’s first pedestrianised shopping centre.

After years of managed decline, regeneration is looming for Chrisp Street Market. A Registered Social Landlord, a property developer, and a Labour authority seek to create their vision of “the New Shoreditch”, with a brief to “change the social mix” of this 9-acre site, situated in the shadow of Canary Wharf, no matter the cost to the established community.

A mass home building program is underway in east London and new homes are rapidly being built on the graveyard of social housing, with regeneration proposals aiming to serve incoming middle class residents. Yet social housing is desperately needed by the local working class community; the people who live & work in Poplar now, rather than the people developers want to attract here.

Chrisp Street Market serves long established and diverse communities which come together 6 days a week in the market square. It serves the everyday needs of the community, and has done for over 100 years. If current regeneration proposals go ahead, a unique east end market will be purposefully gentrified beyond recognition, displacing its community and bustling marketplace in the process.

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